"You talk about naïve," Kress says. "I was kind of a progressive Democratic politician wading into all this, and I had no idea. I had been the Democratic Party chairman, and I had worked with a lot of people, and I wandered into this. It was a rude awakening"
Kress remembers trying to persuade the late Kathlyn Gilliam, an African-American board member, that it was important to keep affluent white people from turning their backs on the district.
Jay Barker
Mark Melton scrambled to the top.
Jay Barker
Harlan Crow had all but written off Dallas schools when he saw glimmers of hope and decided to kick in and contribute.
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"She used to give me lectures on Park Cities types and North Dallas types," he recalls. "I felt that there were a lot of people on the right who would just as soon build their gated communities and get the hell out of here, take their money and their kids and just sort of write it off.
"I said to her, 'You cannot let these people go. When you let them go, it's not going to be good for African-American kids.'
"She thought I was an idiot, mainly because these people had been shits for centuries to her community and to her kids, which was true. So how do you deal with all these things?"
Bob Weiss, now vice president for administration of the philanthropic Meadows Foundation, was an important behind-the-scenes supporter of Kress back in the day and a proponent of reform. He thinks one of the big lessons of time is just that — time. Reformers in that earlier wave were naïve about how much time it would take to get anything important accomplished.
"The degree of difficulty and the complexity of it was totally underestimated," Weiss says. "I think the overlay of class and race was underappreciated against what looked like objective data about results."
During the long, agonizing passage from that earlier campaign to now, some of Kress' fears of white abandonment certainly were realized. It's hard to believe many people didn't simply give up on DISD. One of the more intriguing aspects of the new movement is that it may be helping turn some of that around already.
The second-largest benefactor of the two education PACs after Ken Barth is Harlan Crow, chairman and chief executive officer of Crow Family Holdings, a company devoted to managing the assets of the heirs of the late Trammell Crow. In his early 60s, Crow is a very wealthy man with a reputation for consorting with conservative political figures like his buddy, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
I asked Crow why he thought all of this reform activity was churning up just now.
"That's a fair question," he says. "I have asked myself that same question. The answer is this: As the years have gone by, the long number of years, I did lose hope for DISD, and I just put it out of my thought process as something I wouldn't pay attention to.
"I ignored it, because I felt like it was hopeless. And then maybe a couple years ago I started to see some stirring of good things happening over there. I didn't pay a lot of attention, because I don't wake up thinking about that.
"But then I started thinking, well, shoot, maybe I'll pay a little more attention. And I did that. And I came to the conclusion that there is hope today. And, gosh, if there is hope, it's worth spending a little time and money and putting some oxygen to it."
Mike Miles, the incoming superintendent of schools, is well aware of the reform movement in Dallas and conversant with the principles of cradle-to-graduation and collaborative impact. I spoke to him briefly by phone from Colorado Springs, where he is winding up his tenure as a superintendent before reporting for work in Dallas.
"I welcome groups like Commit! because I think then we can focus and channel those efforts," Miles says.
I ask him who is going to run the district, him or Commit! He chuckles.
"You don't know me," he says. "I was hired to do the job. I'm not going to let somebody else do the job. I'm going to do the job. But, look, you can't run a district the size of Dallas without partners. I hope that almost goes without saying. I'm not a Lone Ranger. I'm not going to go it alone. You gotta have the community involved."
When I spoke with DISD trustee Morath, I asked him about generational change. I told him that the affluent white men I had been interviewing for this story all had personal experiences of diversity, both ethnic and economic, that made them quite unlike what I had come to expect of affluent white men of my own (older) generation.
Morath agreed. "As more and more people have more exposure, race as a category means less and less, and that's only going to happen as generations come and go. People have to die off."
I silently hoped that would not have to include me or Crow any time soon. But I saw what he meant.
The new reformers don't have every answer. I'm not sure we know yet that they have any answers. But they're also not your grandfather's rich white people. Well, wait. I guess they're not my rich white people.
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